Category: thoughts

I don’t have any proper pictures of this meal, but I want to share it anyway. There was nothing special in the cooking. There is no recipe here. But there is something awfully special in the meal itself: This was our first meal in our new home.

We moved in two weekends ago, after I spent a month living with my aunt and uncle and Mr. X spent a month back in Boston, packing and cleaning and saying good bye to the city where he lived for 13 years. It was a pretty joyous weekend, even with all the unpacking and cleaning, not to mention moving around those heavy boxes of books (oh, so many books). We were both fairly giddy, to be here, to be in our apartment, to be together.

But we were awfully tired after all the unpacking. So we went to Trader Joe’s and bought some marinated steak and some tortillas, an avocado and some salad greens. We had intended to fire up our new grill before we discovered that it’s out of propane, but this gave us an excuse to try out the convection feature of our oven (yes, I have a convection oven! Oh the joy!). We heated a cast iron skillet in the oven, and cooked the thinly sliced steak quickly, searing it and flipping it with just a few minutes on each side. We heated tortillas in the microwave, too hungry to warm them individually on the gas burner (yes, I have a gas stove again! Oh the joy!). We sliced cucumbers and avocado, and made a simple vinaigrette, and dinner was served.

There isn’t anything special about this meal in and of itself, and with no recipe to share, I wondered if I should write anything at all. But it was a wonderful meal, and testament to the fact that when you’re happy, even the most pre-prepared, labor-free food can be something memorable.

I’ve been blogging somewhere else. Yes, it’s true. I’ve mentioned a few times that I was feeling like I might be ready to move on from The Kitchen Illiterate and start a new food writing adventure, and I think I’m finally ready for the big reveal. Or, really, the small, shaky reveal, because it’s not completely 100% finished yet. But if you’re interested in seeing where I’ve been lately, The Lone Gastronome is ready for visitors.

This new blog is focused on cooking and eating well for one (or two). I try to take a Food Matters-style approach to cooking, and intend to offer plenty of advice for shopping, storing food, and meal planning when you’re cooking small meals only intended to feed one or two people.

It’s definitely a work in progress, but I’m hoping it will grow into its breeches soon enough. And truth be told, I’ll probably still post here from time to time, when I’m working on a recipe that doesn’t really fit over there or cooking something new and unusual. But posts here will probably continue to be fewer and further between.

I hope you enjoy the new blog, though! Please feel free to send me any feedback, too.

Sorry for the radio silence, folks. I’ve been feeling particularly uninspired in the kitchen lately, and the onset of fall and short days has lead me into a strong desire for hibernation. I’ve been eating lots of big bowls of beans and roasted vegetables and pasta these days. But I have some good meals planned this week, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll find the energy to write about them. When the sun sets at 4:15, it’s awfully hard to want to do anything but curl up in the couch and go to sleep by 8. Dang winter.

It appears that March is the month when I take an unintended absence from the kitchen, or at least from writing about it. As usual, I might not be posting, but I have been cooking. However, every time I sat down to share what I’ve been cooking, I couldn’t find a way to make it fit. See, I’ve been eating very differently lately. You might have noticed some of those differences: a lot more vegetables, a lot less pasta, butter, and cream. I rarely make New Year’s resolutions, but this year I decided I needed to make some changes in how I eat. I’m never one to advocate dieting. A life without pasta, chocolate, and burgers is no life at all. But balance? I’m always in favor of that, and this year, I realized I have to put my money where my mouth is, and eat what I advocate.
Continue reading A new month, a new menu

Oh, hello. Yes, my site looks different again. My fancy pants custom CSS extension is expiring, and I have grand plans to move this little blog on over to its very own home, so I didn’t want to re-subscribe. I hope it’s not too jarring.

I had all these grand expectations that I was going to be cooking up a storm and blogging like a mad lady once I moved to Walla Walla. But I forgot one thing: I am also working a full-time job for the first time in two years (not that being a student and working 20 hours a week wasn’t time consuming, but it’s different). I am also settling into a new town and a new life, one in which, frankly, I don’t know anyone and have been going through the gamut of emotional reactions to starting anew. All of this to say, oops. Sorry! I promised, and I didn’t deliver.

This unexpected busy-ness is compounded by the fact that I’ve been having a bit of a disastrous time in the kitchen. Adjusting to the electric stove is proving trickier than I expected. And things have been turning out, if not bad tasting, decidedly un-photogenic. And uninteresting. And certainly not worth sharing. I have even (gasp!) wondered if I wanted to keep doing this blog, instead of just cooking for myself (and, yeah, for myself, because I don’t even have a dog to feed these days). No need for alarm, though. As Miss Crystal reminded me last weekend, when I visited her in Portland, I just have to ease up and give myself time to settle in and get used to this new life o’ mine. Then I’m sure I’ll be back in fine form, and concocting all kinds of things I can’t wait to share.
Continue reading Living and Eating in Walla Walla

I have mentioned here before that I have a big ol’ shiny site re-design in the works. In pursuit of that project, I’m looking for a budding graphic designer who might be able to draw me up a nifty logo.

I don’t have much in the way of extra funds these days to hire an artist, BUT I can cook! So in exchange for your artistic services, I’m happy to invite you over for a home-cooked meal (if you live in the Walla Walla, WA area) or I will mail you a huge and tasty care package of your favorite kinds of treats.

If you think you might be willing to put your skills to work for the new and improved Kitchen Illiterate, and get some good eatings for your labor, please either leave a comment here or email me at lkrier@yahoo.com.

I’ve talked about Michael Pollan here before. I consider his books some of the most life-changing books I’ve read, and sometimes I feel like I’m on a little personal mission to get everyone in the world to read them. This TED video is a great introduction to his ideas, and to the idea of truly sustainable farming. I grinned the whole time I watched it.

I hope that you’ll pass this video along. Share it with everyone you know! This one is definitely an idea worth spreading.

UPDATE: WordPress won’t let me embed the video from TED, for reasons I can’t quite fathom. You can watch it on the TED website for now. Hopefully I’ll figure out how to embed it when I have more time.

UPDATE AGAIN: The video is available through the YouTubes, which I can embed, so here you go:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQPN1O03z8I&hl=en&fs=1]